Why can't we just be happy with being born a male or female?

Some people develop mental illnesses. It's always sad to hear about these cases.

I can't relate to it but people go through with it and the surgery is so drastic that I cant imagine you'd change genders on a whim. I'm told there are people who, when they look in the mirror they're frequently surprised because they aren't the gender that they're feeling. I don't feel feminine but to others, especially men, i'm sure they'd be able to pinpoint some feminine characteristics. So basically I'm prepared to accept people wouldn't go on about it given all the stigma against it, unless they were convinced they'd been allotted the wrong body and the alternative - male or female -

seems more appropriate. We only recognise those, so it could be a mixture of not feeling you should be the gender you're born as and wanting to be the gender you've not been born as.

This question has been asked and answered so many times with the same cast of "I totally agree" people responding that I don't really feel like giving a detailed answer. I'll simply ask you to try to exercise your apparently minimal empathy and consider the following: suppose you spent every waking minute living as and being treated like something you're not? Suppose that your every instint said you were one thingl and the rest of the world said you were something else? Don't you suppose that might get very old very quickly? That spending your life as though you were playing a character on stage might be a little wearing? That just telling someone "be happy being something you're not" might not be the most useful advice?

As to your analogy with not being a murderer, are you high? How does my being trans in any way compare to my killing someone? The fact that you don't understand something places no burden of any sort on me. And tell me - exactly what gives you the audacity to think you can tell me how to live my life? What kind of arrogance does it take for you to assume you understand my life better than I do, and better than the experts who spend their lives studying this? Your attitude is not mirrored by the AMA, the APA, the WPATH, the BPS, or any other professional medical organization in the Western world. Do you think perhaps they might understand something about this that your five minutes of (if you'll pardon the term) thought doesn't give you?

Transgender individuals /can/ be something other than male or female. Many think they are both male and female or neither, or somewhere in between. There is absolutely no decision made other than to talk to a gender therapist and undergo hormone replacement therapy and/or surgery.

I have a better idea for you: Why can't you just be happy with minding your own business? What trans people do with their very own personal bodies is their concern, not yours.

That is not the issue. I am male with a male to male orientation

I half agree with you. I think you were meant to be what you were born as, but if it makes you unhappy and you'd like to switch to be happy, you only have one life, by all means do what you find necessary to be happy. Changing genders isn't hurting anyone, its your life/body and you can do what you want with it, with limitations of course.

I'm not happy, I'm ecstatic what I was born as.

i was born a perfectly happy girl who wondered why her body was different from the other girls.

with a gross birth defect. long since corrected...

"Americans who adopt this nonsense do it as a result of a far too relaxed lifestyle with way too much time on their hands.

I agree.

I don't FEEL like a woman. I was born female so I just assume that whatever it is that I am "feeling" is what it is like to be a woman.

How would you know what it feels like to be a man without actually living life as a man first (and vice-versa)?

Never question what youve never experienced i dont understand but i cant judge either because i havent lived it